“With all due respect, I have never found that English idiom to convey respect of any sort.” He pushed his limp blond hair back. “I did not say I would wait until the twenty-seventh only that it was my next free day. It is too late to depart today. Tomorrow I have meetings that I cannot put off.”
“Sir—”
He held up his hand to stop me. “I am responsible for the health and safety of three hundred and twenty-eight people. The main spaceport is blocked by a downed rocket and contaminated with propellant. The supplies that were on your ship are still, in fact, aboard it. When I say that I cannot reschedule tomorrow I am not being an obstructionist. I am prioritizing because I am the administrator for this colony. Are we clear?”
I had to borrow a trick from Elma and count to ten in my head before I could answer him calmly. “Yes, thank you. Please let me know when you would like to go and I will make the arrangements for the BusyBee.”
“Two days. The nineteenth.” He turned the calendar around to face me. “And since you’re supposed to be my secretary … Clear these appointments, will you?”
NINETEEN
100 LEADERS ASK FOR END OF VIOLENCE
Mississippians Appeal for Prosecutions in Rioting
JACKSON, Miss., April 17, 1963—Continuing clashes between Meteor refugees evacuated from New York and residents of Jackson have spilled out of the city into the surrounding suburbs. More than 100 business, industrial, and professional leaders of Mississippi appealed today for an end to violence in the state and prosecution of those responsible for mob rioting.
Waiting in the communications module for my call to Kenneth, I sat in one of the ubiquitous plastic chairs suspecting everyone. It had been two days since the power outage and nothing had happened.
I sat next to Wafiyyah Zinat Abbasi. The young botanist was on her third lunar rotation and had been on our shuttle as a replacement. Theoretically, Clemons had swapped her in because she was trustworthy, but I barely knew her. Until this trip, we’d been on alternate rotations.
“Have you been out to the caves yet this trip?” Framed by her headscarf, her skin had a youthful glow that I achieved only by dint of a healthy layer of cold cream every night. “They finished wiring the grow lights since the last time I was up. Oh! It is so exciting.”
I held up my cast, winking. “They’re keeping me pretty close to the main base right now.”
“Oh, of course.” Wafiyyah’s face grew serious and I regretted the joke. “How is your arm?”
“Good, thanks.” Honestly, the cast was worse than the chin bandage. That, at least, I had been able to have fun lying about. “Wish me luck reassuring my husband. Who are you calling today?”
“My lab partner. Huda. Her asthma is very bad, so she is not rated for spaceflight, but is the smartest person I know regarding amelioration of soil. I wanted to run some numbers past her.”
“You shouldn’t use your personal call for that! Come by the administrator’s office and I can let you use his line.”
“Oh, no … This is something I should be able to work out on my own.”
“It’s still work.” I dug into the thigh pocket of my trousers— by the way, the best thing about life on the Moon is all the pockets—and pulled out my little notebook. “You get one personal call a week. Don’t throw that away on business.”
She flushed. “Well, it is. I mean. We are … we are very good friends and so it is mostly a social call. The numbers are just an excuse.”
I smiled to myself as I pieced things together. Holding the little pen out to her, I gave her the courtesy of pretending not to notice that this was probably a romantic call. “You haven’t signed my cast yet, have you?”
There were probably better ways to track who I had spoken with, but I was in no danger of losing this set of notes. Wafiyyah was right-handed and had a small, elegant signature.
“Nicole Wargin.” Faustino beckoned me.
“Faustino … What’s got you working in comms?”
He shrugged. “Birgit has a cold so I offered to cover.”
“Not … not food poisoning?”
“No. Only achy, from what she said.” He shrugged again, which was apparently how he communicated. “You’re in booth five.”
The phone booths were not much different from ones on Earth. They were little boxes, just big enough for a stool with a phone mounted to the wall except they are made of plastic and aluminum rather than wood and glass. Murmuring snippets of conversation snuck between the thin walls.
“… couldn’t make your recital…”
“… see what the doctor says…”
“… two sticks of butter, a cup of…”
“… you said Mrs. Which did what?”
I pushed the door open and settled on the plastic chair. It was still warm to the touch from the last caller. The receiver is the same plain black form as on Earth, so when you pick it up, the lightness surprises you.
“Operator.” The voice on the other end of the line was a young woman on Lunetta orbital station.
“Earth, Kansas long distance, please.”
“Surely.” In my ear, the sound changed subtly, as if the gravity well of Earth were audible, and a different woman said, “Long distance.”
“Operator, I’d like to place a call to Topeka: Oldfield three-seven-two-three-four.”
There was a pause, as my voice transmitted across space to her. Not long, but enough to feel the difference. “Surely.”
She didn’t ask me to deposit coins. The IAC paid for these weekly calls and I was deeply grateful every time I called home.
The phone rang, cutting off mid-bell. “Hello, Kenneth Wargin speaking.”
I sagged against the side of the booth because part of me had been convinced that his letter to me had been someone else writing to mask another heart attack. My voice shook with relief. “Hello, love.”
A gap, just enough to make me think the line had cut out, even though I know it takes 1.3 seconds for my voice to get to Earth and another 1.3 seconds for his voice to return to me.
“Nicole.” His voice went rough, just on the shape of my name. His next breath caught against the receiver. “I have been … worried.”
“I’m sorry. I’m okay, really.” I glanced down at the cast, wondering if his “company” was already in the room. It was our code for a reporter. If he’d said “guest” it would have been a diplomat of some sort. Just in case he wasn’t alone, I was circumspect with my reply. “It’s more annoying than anything.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Did you buy me flowers?”
He chuckled. “No. I hope that doesn’t distress you.”
I wrapped the cord around my knuckles. “Not in the slightest. What would I do with flowers on the Moon, anyway?”
“Well … maybe you’d like a book instead? Nathaniel caught me up on what he’s been reading lately.”
I wanted to just talk to him, freely, but our private conversation was now about to be in service to the Icarus project. And people wondered why our marriage was in trouble. When did we get time for ourselves? But I know my job and I kept my voice light. “Did you have a book in mind?”
“I did. The Long Tomorrow, by Leigh Brackett. And since I can’t deliver it to you, I checked to see if there’s a copy in the lunar library. Got myself a copy to match, so I can imagine us reading together. Just the two of us.”
“You are the most romantic thing…” That was unexpected. If I understood him correctly, he wanted to use a book code for us, not for IAC business. I had two simultaneous reactions. One was that I was delighted to have some form of privacy with him. The other was fear about what had gone wrong that he needed a code to talk about. “I’ll check it out as soon as I’m done here.”
“We’ll talk about it in our next letter, hm?”
I nestled the phone against my cheek and something made a boing almost like a comic book spring being struck. “Did you hear that?”
“The spring
sound?”
“Yes…” In the silent space between us lay a question: Was it just a sound, or was someone intercepting the call? Clemons had said that Icarus had someone in comms. Sending radio waves from the Earth to the Moon required the Outer Space Tracking Network. Back when we’d started, the IAC had just had a single radio dish and the rotation of the Earth had caused loss of signal except when Kansas was pointed at the Moon. Now, the OSTN had three large-array radio dishes on Earth coupled with satellites. None of them should have sent a sound back into our call. “How odd.”
“It’s likely from the apparatus that the reporter set up in the office.” Kenneth sighed heavily and his speech slowed down, distress building pauses between his words. “I … should bring them in. I’m sorry, Nicole. It’s just that the political pressure to announce is significant. Denley imposed the curfew and it’s not … good. I think … being a formal candidate will give me the ability to cut through the noise. A little.”
“I understand.” There was a time when we talked about the opera on these calls. “Any new talking points in your platform?”
“The usual. Emphasizing, perhaps, that the distress of Earthbound citizens is real, while drawing a line between peaceful protests and the extremism of the Earth Firsters. Only don’t mention the—”
“Don’t mention the Earth First movement by name. I know…” I sighed and closed my eyes. “I know my job. I’ll be the loving and supportive space wife.”
“Nicole…”
“It’s all right.” I sniffled and sat up a little straighter in the booth, as if the person on the other end of the line would be able to see me. We had the technology to do a visual conference, but that was something only the engineers and flight controllers used. I had no access to it for private business. “Let me talk to the reporter.”
* * *
The nice thing about working in Frisch’s office was that I had easy access to personnel files. I consulted my cast to see who I was still missing and pulled Kadyn Murphy’s file from the cabinet. According to his file, he had listed chess as his recreational activity.
So I headed to the cafeteria where our chess club met. It is a long, low room that occupies half of the main floor of the Habitation Module. The curving walls glow during the two-week lunar day thanks to lightwells from the surface. Tomorrow, the light would drop abruptly as we shifted to night and fewer people would find reason to congregate here.
Amid the scent of cabbage and rehydrated beans, pairs of men and women huddled over chessboards along one wall. Some of the games had spectators, chatting quietly. Helen’s was one of those, unsurprisingly. She was leaning back in her chair with an incipient smile waiting for her partner to realize that he had already lost. Oh, occasionally someone beat her, but the woman had been a chess champion in Taiwan before joining the IAC.
She glanced up as I crossed the cafeteria and waved. “Nicole! What brings you here?”
So much for being discreet. Half of the club turned around to look at me. “Just grabbing some lunch.”
One of the guys raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t it a little late for lunch?”
“I was busy and forgot to eat.” I shrugged. “You know how it is … Call it an early dinner if it makes you more comfortable.”
“They have cabbage!” One of the long-timers grinned. “And lettuce from The Garden!”
“I’ll check it out.” To look as though I had a legitimate reason to be there, I wandered over to the food stations to see if there was anything palatable. Kadyn Murphy should have been easy to spot. At nearly two meters, he was one of the taller colonists. I had loved talking to him in training, because his accent shifted from Caribbean to a painfully sterile, but beautifully posh Queen’s English in this gorgeous baritone. I caught him singing once. Just once, and I was determined to get him to sing again.
I stopped by Helen’s table and waited until her turn was over. Chess is not my game, but Helen was playing white and there were not a lot of black pieces left on the board. “Have you seen Kadyn?”
She shook her head. “Not since yesterday for his rover checkout.”
“They have you doing rover training?” Teaching people to drive on the Moon wasn’t the worst job, but it was so far below her skill set as to be laughable.
“At least it gets me out of the habitat.” She glanced around the room, frowning. “But I am surprised that Kadyn isn’t here. We played a couple of times on Earth and he is not terrible.”
One of the long-timers whistled. “Whew. Remind me not to play him if the Abbess thinks he’s not terrible. That translates as damn good. Begging your pardon.”
“The Abbess?”
Her partner reached for a pawn and sat there, resting his fingers on it and frowning. “Like a girl bishop. The bishop is one of the most powerful pieces on the board, but is underrated because folks focus on the queen. People never see Helen coming.”
Two tables down, one of the women from the computing department leaned forward. “Kadyn is sick.”
“Oh ho! And how do you know that, Garnet?” Another computer nudged her. “Got your hooks into him already?”
“No! It’s nothing like that.” Garnet’s blush said that it was exactly like that. “We’re just friends is all. I knew Kadyn on Earth but I deployed first. We played chess together. That’s all.”
My brain circled back to his absence. “I’m sorry to hear he’s not feeling well. He didn’t look like he had space sickness on the flight out.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Just a stomach bug. He thought he might have come down with the same thing Major Lindholm had.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Was someone up here deliberately tainting food? My veins chilled. “He was one of my trainees, so I’ll go look in on him. Is he in his berth?”
“I’ll go with you.” Helen slid her chair back.
Her partner moved the pawn forward a square. “Does that mean you forfeit?”
“No. That’s check and mate in two.” She slid her bishop across the board and took out his remaining tower. “Your move.”
* * *
As it happened, Kadyn was not in his berth. He was in the men’s lavatory audibly retching. It was, shall we say, not an appropriate time to question him.
Crossing the hall from the West Bay men’s quarters, I kept thinking about how sick Eugene had been on the ship. Was this the same thing? Or had someone poisoned him the way they had Nathaniel? And if so, why would someone target Kadyn? He was a botanist.
In the corridor between the men and women’s quarters, Helen touched my arm gently and stopped next to the spiral stairs in the center of the module. “What is going on?”
“What do you mean?”
Her mouth twitched. “After you told me about Nathaniel and FBI, you had several meetings with Clemons before launch. He put you in secretarial. You cannot type. The IAC has made a number of schedule changes, specifically swapping out personnel. All of this points to something larger being off-nominal.”
“There was a rocket crash.” I tried to laugh it off, but Helen is smart enough that she could fill in the gaps. “Are you missing a favorite chess partner?”
She gave an aggrieved sigh. “I respect secrets, but I would rather have you tell me that something is off-limits than have you give me misinformation. A hole in the data, I can work with.”
It is harder to lie when I don’t want to. “A hole in the data sounds like one of Elma’s absurd double entendres.”
“I want you to appreciate that I am not pushing you for more information.” She drummed her fingers on the curving banister surrounding the stairs. “My curiosity is very strong.”
“I appreciate it more than you know.” And I could relate to it. If I had been in her shoes, I would have chipped away at the edges of the secret until I could pull it out into the open. I had to get her off this topic and, hoping a location change would help, walked to the door of the East Bay women’s quarters.
“At least we’ve confirmed that Kady
n is really sick.” Helen followed me into the “lobby” of EBW, which was a small semi-circular common area that served as a buffer to the crew quarters ringing it. When the base was new, we’d slept in bunks, but with the expansion had come private rooms. Tiny private closets, really.
I shrugged, shifting the focus of the conversation further from the Icarus project. “True. It’s hard to get men to give a health report accurately under the best of circumstances. For all I know, ‘under the weather’ actually means dying. They all think they can out-macho a germ.”
“Do you want to tell me what is going on with Kenneth?” Helen kicked her shoes off and set them by the door to her cubby. In the middle of our common room, a giant braided rug softened the gray floor. The blues and whites of cast-off uniform fabric had been pushed to lilacs, lavenders, and deep purples thanks to dye that someone had brought up.
I glanced at the closed cubby doors. Even if we had the common room to ourselves at the moment, there was no guarantee that people weren’t in their rooms. From experience, I knew exactly how little sound the plastic “doors” kept out. “Oh, he was just so … typical. He was sick and didn’t tell me.” But I made eye contact with her and mouthed “heart attack.”
Her eyes widened. “Is he … is he all right now?”
I spread my hands wide as if I could encompass all of my frustrations. “That’s what he tells me.”
Helen stared at me for a moment. I am honestly not sure what she saw, or if she simply played through the possible scenarios the way she ran chess moves in her mind. What I know is that she crossed the small room and folded me into a hug.
I did not mean to weep. But at least I was silent.
TWENTY
FIRST LADY OF THE MOON?
By Julie Holderman, Special to The National Times
TOPEKA, Kan., April 19, 1963—After Gov. Wargin became the first in his party today to announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president, many noted the absence of his wife from the activities. This reporter reached Mrs. Wargin at her residence on the lunar colony to inquire about her ability to perform her duties as First Lady from the Moon, should her husband achieve his goals. “Naturally,” she said, “the needs of our great nation come first. While I love serving my planet through my work here, I look forward to coming home to Kansas.”
The Relentless Moon Page 18
